Merciful oblivion has swallowed up the names of those who railed at the men who were saving the Union, while it has given us the memory of these same men as a heritage of honor forever; and brightest among their names flame those of Lincoln and Grant, the steadfast, the unswerving, the enduring, the finally triumphant.
In an essay advocating for a life of effort, this passage reflects on how history remembers those who act decisively during national crises.
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More from Teddy Roosevelt
Shame on the man of cultivated taste who permits refinement to develop into a fastidiousness that unfits him for doing the rough work of a workaday world.
The man who does nothing cuts the same sordid figure in the pages of history, whether he be cynic, or fop, or voluptuary.
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles.
I care for the great deeds of the past chiefly as spurs to drive us onward in the present.
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